I'm Amanda Krauss, and I solve things that look like tech problems but usually aren't.
Sometimes code helps. Sometimes it doesn't.

What I Do

I'm digital media leader who is happiest at the intersection of technology, user needs, and business goals. I care deeply about processes that make people happy and productive, and when it comes to digital organization, Marie Kondo's got nothing on me. I've heard what I do called product management, UX design, or content strategy; I don't really care what we call it, as long as we're making strategically smart decisions. If you'd like to see a a full résumé, please visit my LinkedIn profile.

Lead

As Christina Wodtke noted, "Being a good manager is 90% having a series of difficult conversations". I'm good at those, and also good at inspiring folks to do their best work towards a common goal. It doesn't hurt that I used to be a professor; I'm research-driven, a good public speaker, and I love the challenge of bringing different stakeholders to consensus.

Strategize

Before you worry about technology stacks, you need to be clear about your project goals and your definition of success. We'll focus on the problems you're trying to solve, rather than choosing technical solutions first. And when it comes time to choose the solution, we won't jump for the shiniest new product on the block.

Promote Best Practices

To achieve your digital goals, you need to allow your design to be data-driven, and your development to be user-centered. Sometimes it's hard to hear honest feedback from the people you think you're serving -- but it's essential! While you're at it, you'll want to make sure readers are clicking that beautifully designed button, and can read that awesome font on mobile.

What
Next?

Contact Me

Tribune Site Redesign

“Project Hummingbird” is our internal code name for the Texas Tribune site redesign. In keeping with best practices, I planned a gradual approach, starting with of the story page. As product lead, I’ve conducted stakeholder interviews, user interviews, and content exercises. In addition, I asked our lead developer to pull metrics on current page use, and to work closely with the design team to produce rapid, mobile-first protoypes that will create the basis for our site’s modular design system. So far, we’re iterating on code prototypes, and we’re hoping to get our beta in front of readers by spring 2016. In running this project, I am particularly inspired by Kevin Hoffman’s “Co-Design, Not Redesign” philosophy as well as his approach to designing meetings.

Client:
The Texas Tribune

Date:
September 2015-present

Service:
Strategy

Online Footnote UI

Teaching was one of my earliest UX “a-ha” moments: The students simply wouldn’t read endnotes because flipping to the back of the books was too much work. Same-page footnotes are a far better solution when reading on paper, but unfortunately I haven’t seen them used in digitual reading. That makes me sad – I mean, notes are great! They can contain anything from helpful information to entire chapters (cf. David Foster Wallace). So, when I found out a a play I’d co-translated was being put on at UCLA, I wanted to put it online with notes that felt as effortless as possible for the reader. The demo is here, and the repo is here.

Client:
self and co-author

Date:
April 2014

Service:
UI Development

The Betty App

A stylist friend wanted a branded address app for her salon, and invited me to help. I made some wireframes, chose a color theme based on her website and built the protoype using Ruby on Rails, jQuery mobile, and SASS. It’s a really eye-opening experience to build something from conception to code, and it was definitely a fun way to expand my skills! Demo here, repo here.

Client:
Urban Betty

Date:
April 2014

Service:
Web Development

TribTalk Opinion Site

Tribtalk is an opinion website – a sister site to the main Texas Tribune news website – launched in May of 2014. As technical lead, I began with having stakeholder use a low-fi paper wireframing process, and worked with the Art department to create a mobile-first design/development process. Given our frustration with the limits of the generic Django administrative interface, I developed the UI using separate view templates. We meant this site to serve as an experimental ground to see where we might go with our main site. Overall, we were very happy with the clean look of the site.

Client:
Texas Tribune

Date:
May 2014

Service:
Web Development, UX/UI

Texas Tribune Festival

The Texas Tribune’s signature event is the Texas Tribune Festival. Held in the fall of every year, it brings together citizens, politicans, and policy experts in what has been called “Woodstock for Wonks”. It started with four event tracks in 2010, and by 2013 it had grown to nine event tracks and numerous related special events. In addition, the site was not originally designed to be responsive. In my view, this meant it was a perfect opportunity for a content audit. In order to accomodate the growing number of tracks, I chose to employ an off-canvas menu I’d been reading about; I was particularly excited to by the minimal use of JavaScript and the fast performance of CSS transitions. Our audit and menu allowed the designer to pursue a bolder, module-driven approach. You can compare the before and after. Successive festivals have continued to use the new structure.

Client:
The Texas Tribune

Date:
August 2013

Service:
UI, Content

Lawmaker Explorer

Too often, data-driven apps are informative, but not engaging. Because this app informs people about their lawmakers, I wanted to make it inviting, and maybe even a little fun. I’d been reading about interesting hover effects, and hoped that by using them, combined with the arrow and pictures, I’d make the pages a little more engaging. I ended up using the Masonry library for the filtering effect, which was a little heavy-duty in retrospect; but given the time constraints, I’m pretty pleased with the project. You can visit the expolorer here.